It would be nice if they could make a partially offline version that would be commercially viable for quite a few years before having to fully shut down all the servers. What I'm envisaging is get rid of the servers that let people move about the open world together, so no multiplayer racing, no seeing other players in the open world in real time, no crews etc. But keep servers to run summits and event leaderboards, transfer new inventory to Motorfest etc. I'd have thought running only those servers would be quite a small fraction of the total cost.
I think this would be a really good scenario, and with the player base dropping off anyway (there are <7,000 playing the Xbox summits currently) they could possibly retire servers as user numbers continue to drop. User numbers will inevitably drop once:
A) you can no longer import vehicles and vanities to TCM;
B) summits cease.
The time span for TC2 might be limited by licensing agreements (only Ivory know the answer to this), so there might be a "deadline" at which they have to delist the game, but this scenario could mean the servers could stay up after that point.
I dont think the summits will be viable to include in the game files when the servers finally go down (I assume they are all currently generated from the Ivory end).
Less serious question - in your scenario, how they can continue to call the game The Crew 2 if you can no longer join a crew
And there will be no reason to kick you out of the offline mode. Just like in Forza when you enter solo mode if inactive for a period of time during online session.
I see we have the Huracan Performante coming up in a Crew 2 summit. This does seem to be a summit exclusive in The Crew 2, which I thought was odd, as summit cars aren't normally standard retail cars. Presumably for that reason, it's available in Motorfest to simply purchase for credits, so the only reasons to get it from the Crew 2 summit are if you don't already have it in Motorfest, as it saves you 1.3m credits in Motorfest, or if you want to have it in The Crew 2 to use it in The Crew 2.
@strela Thanks - helpful advice, unless you REALLY need to pee, in which case you might not be able to wait until the race finishes loading
@breeminator I am guessing that Lamborghini summit is going to be an expensive one unless you already have the required vehicles. At least you definitely WON'T need the Lamborghini boat
Ultimately, as with
@Johnny Caisse , I hope they find a way to make summit vehicles available for bucks when the game goes offline. Prestige tickets (or Backstage Passes like FH5) wouldn't work for TC2 I think, as there would be no way to earn them after the end of the Summits unless they added some kind of "custom mode" but that doesn't seem practical.
One thing that has to be considered is that, whilst Ivory are rightfully allocating resources to making offline for TC2, those resources are inevitably going to be limited, so I can see the quickest solutions being the ones used.
The quickest solution for summit exclusive vehicles (and vanities) would be to not make them available at all, I don't think they will do this, but the next quickest solution is probably to add them to the bucks store.
(Wow, thats a long post - sorry!)
PS
@GTvsForza I am also rotating the cars for the Nissan/Mitsu hobby, but I run one car for 50/60 miles per each playing session.
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